


How Do Cats Sparkle?

by gloss



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shop, Equius♦Nepeta - Freeform, F/F, non-sburb AU, romcom, trolls and humans living together, trope bingo, unforgivably bad cat puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 22:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where trolls and humans coexist, however uneasily, Roxy Lalonde is an admitted disaster, Nepeta Leijon just wants to make an honest go of the city's first cat cafe, and the cat puns come fast and thick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Do Cats Sparkle?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inklesspen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklesspen/gifts).



> Thanks to Plaid and cest_what for very timely encouragement and to G. for the amazing beta.
> 
> For [inkless_pen](http://inklesspen.tumblr.com/post/42278466610/homestuck-kickstarter-rewards-giveaway) on Tumblr.

No one is more disappointed in Roxy than Roxy herself. She honestly intends to follow through and make good on commitments! She's not just offering to help for the fun of it; she's perfectly sincere about wanting to help.

It's just that life has this way of tripping her up, distracting her, going cock-eyed and inside-out, more than it does for other people.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" She starts shouting at the foot of Jane's driveway, jumping off her bicycle, and does not stop until the door opens. She is well past the appointed hour, soaked to the skin by rain she hadn't known to expect, out of breath and choking on apologies.

"Really, Roxy, I --" Jane breaks off, taking in Roxy's dishevelled appearance. She gestures her inside. "Where's your car?"

Roxy takes a moment to savor the warmth inside the house, the air scented with vanilla and yeast, all those good, solid, beautiful Jane-qualities. "Turns out I had a flat, but I haven't driven it in so long, I didn't know, and the battery was dead, and I _think_ there's some kind of fluid issue, not sure. Can tires just go flat? Just like that?"

As she talks, she makes her way into Jane's kitchen. It is seriously professional in here, massive oven and a stand mixer almost as tall as Jane herself (though that isn't saying much; Jane's kind of a shrimp), cooling racks chockful of cookies and scones, neat glass jugs of flour and...other stuff that looks like flour.

Roxy heaves herself back and upwards onto the counter next to the giant industrial sink. Munching an orange scone, she adds, when Jane hasn't replied, "So what's the big emergency?"

Jane's in the doorway, fiddling with the tie on her apron. "I need someone to do the deliveries."

"What about the princess?"

Jane frowns. "Meenah's away for the week. And please don't call her that."

Grinning widely, Roxy dusts the crumbs off her hands and hops to her feet. "Hey, it's not my fault she's an honest to god royal-type person. Take it up with...I dunno, who do you take complaints about hereditary aristocracy to, anyway? UN? Workers of the World?"

Jane's mouth is tight; Roxy can tell she's wavering between being pissed on her girlfriend's behalf and wanting to smile. "That is rather beside the point. The point is, I need --"

"Deliveries, got it." Roxy claps her hands. "I am your woman. Load me up, point the way!"

Jane takes a breath. She blinks, then keeps her eyes closed. Finally, she exhales slowly and opens her eyes. "On your bicycle? In the rain?"

"Wrap 'em up in a trash bag or something, c'mon! Time's a-wasting!"

"I do appreciate your enthusiasm," Jane says, slow and deliberate, "however sudden and unfocused it may be."

Roxy salutes her crisply. "Sudden and unfocused, that's the Roxy guarantee."

*

In the end, against every ounce of her better judgment, Jane lets her drive Meenah's beloved Sebring. Tricked out with every conceivable extra, from warming seats and a truly balling sound system to blue neon undercarriage and personalized GPS (Greetings, your most rad and phat-as-shell Condescension-in-exile, where would you like to go today?), it is also detailed with purple and blue waves where other cars would sport flames.

Roxy drives as carefully as humanly, or Lalondely, possible. She's not going to mess this up further, she promised Jane. So she drives like a myopic senior citizen, timidly and defensively. It takes her a good hour to do the first three locations on her list. 

Jane's bakery business is growing slowly. She calls it "deliberate growth", but Roxy thinks that she should just go for it, because once anyone tastes one of her creations, they're hooked for life. Meenah agrees with Roxy, which is fairly unprecedented; they don't tend to see eye to eye on anything. But if it's about how awesome Jane is, then they're unanimous.

Jane just laughs them off when they urge her to expand faster. Although Roxy would never admit, Jane does seem to know what she's doing. She was profiled by City Life as one of the leaders of a new entrepreneurial generation devoted to serving the needs of both trolls and humans: Bi-Successful and Loving It.

Roxy didn't let her live that one down for _months_. The joke was all the better for being incomprehensible to Meenah.

So Roxy has delivered to three bistros, four coffee shops, and one high-end hotel restaurant by the time she comes to the very last address on the list. Three boxes of Jane's goodies slide forlornly back and forth on the back seat where once they'd been stacked to the ceiling with their mates.

The rain has mostly stopped as Roxy crosses the downtown bridge; the river below is gray and choppy, even as the sky starts showing patches of blue.

Until a few years ago, she had rarely been this far into Trolltown. Pisces Boulevard is the traditional demarcation between the human city and the trolls' enclave, but that is changing fast. Now mixed-service businesses pepper the side streets all the way to Damara Avenue; they're even appearing along the next major thoroughfare, Lusus Street.

She finds the small street level shop on 612th, a few doors down from Damara. Curtains cover the two display windows, and she can't really see beyond the boxes in her arms anyway as she approaches the door. She knocks first with her shoulder, but the sound isn't loud enough, so she uses her foot.

She can hear voices inside -- actually just one, raised in what sounds like a mixture of anger and baffled fondness -- but she can't make out what is being said.

When there's no response, she turns sideways again, shifting the boxes into the crook of one arm, and tries the door with her free hand.

"DON'T!" the voice yells as she opens the door. Something runs into her shins, rights itself, and dashes between her and the door jamb. "Oh, no! Come back!"

A small person pushes past Roxy and out into the street. After regaining her balance, Roxy sets down the boxes on the nearest surface. A chubby calico cat jumps on the top and strains toward Roxy, asking for petting. 

"Hey, pretty..." She's scritching the calico's ears, letting her smell her hand, when she feels another cat jump onto her shoulder, four sets of claws digging in. She twists around, trying to get it off, but the cat is gripping her skull now and burying its face in her rain-damp hair. Its purr is deafening.

Cats are so awesome.

"Sorry, sorry! A-purr-ogies all around!" The small person reappears in the doorway, lugging an enormous white cat. If Roxy didn't know better, she'd say the cat's expression was the poutiest she'd seen since Meenah last was denied thirdses on Jane's prawn scones.

Check that, the expression is poutier than that.

"I'm sorry," Roxy says, finally getting the cat licking her hair to slide, claws out, all the way down her left arm. "I shouldn't have opened the door."

"Purrfectly all right!" She sets the grumpy white cat down in a bed that was originally intended for a dog (the dancing bones on the upholstery give it away), then turns back and grips Roxy's hand in both of hers. "I'm Nepeta. You're here for Jane?"

She's a tiny little troll, all messy hair and wide, shining eyes. When she grins, her fangs glint a little. If it's possible, she's even more adorable than her cat-puns, which are, Roxy has to admit, nothing less than _supurrb_.

"Roxy, yeah," Roxy replies. She can't stop smiling at Nepeta. She probably looks like a dork and a half. "How did you know?"

"A purrplexing case, to be sure, but you let the meowbeast out of the bag with..." She pauses dramatically, then indicates the bakery boxes, still decorated with a calico topper, with a huge flourish. "Those!"

"Oh, damn. You got me." Roxy looks around, finally taking in the small shop. There must be fifteen cats wandering around or sleeping; cat trees rise to all levels, while the rest of the furniture is low and carpeted, somewhere between a human swinging 70s conversation pit and a troll's happiest pile. "I didn't know there was a cat cafe here."

Nepeta nods enthusiastically and bats the hair out of her eyes. "Just opened last month!"

"I can't believe Jane didn't tell me." Roxy's texting fingers itch to tap out a recriminatory rant, but Nepeta's still holding one of her hands, and now she's dragging Roxy with her, showing her around.

The walls sport brightly-colored murals of romping cats and happy, smiling people, both troll and human, chasing giant balls of string and tackling each other. There are Furry Serious Rules, This Means YOU! posted in several spots, reminding patrons not to grab or startle the employees, to pet them gently from the head down the spine and never to pull their tails, and to resist feeding them any bipedal food.

She introduces Roxy to most of the cats; the enormous, enormously grumpy white one is Pounce. "She doesn't really like anyone but me," Nepeta confides when Pounce snarls and hisses at a passing colleague.

"Seems like an odd choice for a cat cafe." Roxy longs to stroke Pounce; her fur looks silky and lustrous. It splays out in a ruff around her beautiful, haughty face when she lies down and closes her eyes.

"What're you going to do? She's the boss!"

In the back of the shop, one small room is set up for kitty evacuation needs; Roxy has never seen anything so complex and efficient. Nepeta's moirail invented a whole series of automated litter boxes, triggered by specific weights and scratching patterns. 

The other back room is devoted to food prep; it opens onto the small island in the corner where patrons can order tea and coffee and purchase snacks for themselves and the cats. Troll zoning and health codes are _a lot_ more lax than human, Nepeta admits, otherwise this place never could have opened. When Roxy assures her that it's cleaner than most restaurants she's been in, Nepeta claps her hands and butts her head against Roxy's shoulder.

"This place," Roxy says when the tour is over and she is reclining in a window seat with a tiny ticked tabby curled up in her lap, "is heaven."

In human English, the cafe is called The Land of Little Cubes and Tea. For trolls, it is A Commercial Enterprise That Offers Refreshments Both Potable And Edible Served In The Company Of Many Clean And Healthy Meowbeasts Who Have The Run Of The Place And May Or May Not Deign To Join Patrons In Play, Socializing, Or Rest And Who Are Very Definitely Not To Be Eaten Only Admired And Stroked.

Nepeta hands her another sweet-cream biscuit and pours a cup of startlingly rich, strong tea. "Purromise? I want it to be..." She looks around. "Just right. For everybody."

"I purromise," Roxy says, utterly sincerely, earning a huge smile from Nepeta. "If there's one thing to bring humans and trolls together, it's kitties. And Jane's baking."

When she has finished her tea, something extraordinary happens. Actually, to be precise, two extraordinary things happen in quick succession, one of which is intensely gratifying, while the other proves to be both immediately disconcerting and upsetting.

Pounce wakes from her nap and grumbles at Nepeta, who replies in a burst of rapidfire Trolltongue. Pounce rises, stretching out her front legs until she nearly doubles in length, then jumps from her bed and makes a beeline for Roxy.

Roxy holds out her hand and stays very, very still. Pounce glances at Nepeta, then back at Roxy, before very deliberately swiping first one cheek, then the other, against Roxy's hand. She yawns, the kind of huge, jaw-unhinging and planet-engulfing yawn that only cats can muster, and jumps into Roxy's lap.

"Oh. My. Paws," Nepeta whispers. "She never does that! You're su-purr good with cats!"

Roxy softly strokes the top of Pounce's broad, flat head. Close up, she can see that the silky white fur is tipped with coal black. "I love cats. My mother --"

She doesn't get to finish that sentence, or complete the memory, which might be just as well, as she doesn't like talking about her mother, now long passed, to anyone, let alone a troll she just met.

"Nepeta, I require your consultation and approval," a deep, rumbly voice announces from the door to the back rooms. 

Startled, Roxy looks up to see one of the biggest trolls she has ever encountered outside of playing the villain's henchmen in B-movies. Pounce leaps from her lap and retreats to a cat cave under a bookshelf; where she'd been lying is suddenly cold.

"Equius, I'm _busy_..." Nepeta starts but the troll guy cuts her off.

"Who is this frowsy human female? And what do you think you are doing, lounging about during business horses?" He coughs. "Hours. Business _hours_."

"Hey, buddy --" Roxy stands up, feeling her hands curl into fists. "Who do you think _you_ are?"

Waving her hands, Nepeta gets between them. "It's okay! Every-pawdy calm down!"

"He can't talk to you like --"

"She's dressed remarkably slovenly --"

"Can it!" Nepeta yells. A ginger tabby looks up sleepily from the bed behind her, then chirps a complaint. "Sorry. Just, both of mew. Sssh."

"The contractor is here," the troll tells Nepeta. "You need to sign off on his quotes. Personally, I find his rates exorbitant, but --"

"Fine," Nepeta says curtly. Roxy never would have imagined that the tiny, heartbreakingly cute little troll could hold herself so well, speak with such authority, look them up and down with such cold, appraising eyes. "I'll be back purr-esently. Equius, try not to scare Roxy any more than you can help. Roxy --" She glances over her shoulder and _winks_ at Roxy. Sassy! "Same goes fur mew."

When Nepeta has disappeared into the back, Equius continues to loom. He has his burly arms crossed over his chest and if he feels the kitten climbing his leggings, he gives no sign. "You should leave."

"Excuse me?" Roxy fumbles in her pocket for her ringing phone. 

"I am Nepeta's moirail, and I am telling you," Equius continues, "that you should leave. The very last thing she needs is some human slattern toying with her."

Blood pounds in Roxy's face and it's hard to breathe. She won't be ordered around by anyone. 

There's a text from Jane:  
GG: As it's now four hours gone, you're not back, and I have not heard from you, I must conclude that you and Meenah's beloved car are at the bottom of the river. Really, no other explanation could possibly suffice.

Damn it. Roxy shoves her phone back in her pocket and waves the steroid-case off. She won't be ordered around by anyone _except Jane_.

*

Troll quadrants are _intense_. Maybe Roxy's lucky that she got out before anything got serious. Sure, human comedians love in-law jokes, but that's nothing compared to the entire genres that troll cultures have devoted to quadrants, conflicts and vacillations and Absurdly Endearing Resolutions etc., etc. When Meenah and Jane got serious, Roxy bought out the self-help sections on intercultural understandings and relationships.  So You Love a Troll: The Single Girl's Guide to Quadrants featured some highly revealing diagrams (so _that's_ how a bulge worked), but it was notably short on helpful advice.  Moirallegiance for Dummies was not all that much better, but it did have a good mnemonic for remembering the names of the quadrants and their associated colors.

Furious mares presume mercy and ask creepy kissers, indeed. For the symbols, you just need to ask yourself, How **do** cats sparkle?

Despite all her reading and the seven-week course she took at the university's continuing education center, Roxy still is not all that comfortable with the complexities and turbulences inherent to troll romance. The troll she knows best, Meenah, is obnoxious and power-crazed and kind of awesome, though Roxy would never say so, but it's not as if she can generalize from one troll to all of them.

Nepeta, after all, was none of those things. Except awesome, but in a completely different sense.

Maybe she could _also_ blame her mother for this shortcoming in addition to all her other issues (substance abuse, emotional codependence, an inferiority complex the size of Troll Kansas...). Maybe if she'd grown up in a normal part of the world where trolls and humans mixed, however uneasily, she wouldn't be such an intimidated freak about this. But, no, Mother had to live in her Frank Lloyd Wright retreat, far from madding crowds _and_ healthy multicultural socialization opportunities. Roxy was just along for the ride.

"What do you think, Callie?" She consults Calliope about everything. Sometimes, she wonders if she trusts Calliope more than Jane; she might, but that's just because Calliope can never spill any secrets. Being a cat and all, Calliope's better than a safe deposit box in a confessional in the Vatican.

Calliope butts her warm little face into the curve of Roxy's palm, then wriggles closer. She's a Sphynx hairless, and even if some people (Meenah, Dirk) maintain that she looks like a grub better left on the rendering floor, Roxy thinks she's beautiful. If she had fur, she'd have been gray, but as it is, her wrinkly skin is tinted a faint bluish-greenish gray, like the outside of a hard boiled egg's yolk. 

She licks the base of Roxy's thumb with her raspy tongue, then closes her eyes.

"That's what I figured," Roxy replies. "I'm being way harsh. Poor Mother."

Calliope lifts her head at a sound Roxy can't hear and opens her big, bulbous eyes. One ear twitches forward and she suddenly jumps to her delicate little feet and bounds over to the glass door that lets out onto the patio.

"What's up, baby girl?" Roxy asks as Calliope mews softly and scratches at the curtains covering the glass. Roxy has to keep it very warm at all times; Calliope catches cold at the least little draft.

Yet here she is, worming her way behind the curtains and scratching at the cold glass with her front paws.

When Roxy picks her up, Calliope twists around to scratch at the door again. "Chillax, I'm checking."

Sitting on the patio, just outside the door, is a thickly-muscled, very dignified looking black cat. When Roxy parts the curtains, he looks at her and meows once. Politely, but in no way obsequiously.

"Frigglish?" she asks. She can't believe her eyes; she hasn't seen Frigglish since she was sixteen. Roxy rushes to open the door, and the cat glances at her once, then steps inside. He heads right to the couch where she'd been cuddling with Calliope, jumps up on her spot, turns around a couple times, then settles down, watching her intently. 

Calliope paws at Roxy and finally manages to get free. She jumps up next to Frigglish-who-can't-be-Frigglish, sniffs his ear, and lies down next to him. Like they were littermates.

Roxy goes down on her knees in front of the couch. She can't quite feel her fingertips and her head feels floaty and she can't take a full breath. He _looks_ like Frigglish, from the stray white hairs around his toes to the odd little kink midway down his tail.

"Frigglish?" she says again. The cat cocks his head, looking at her like she is the babbling dolt she feels she must be, then extends his paw toward her. He puts his chin atop the paw and closes his eyes. Calliope gets closer, licking his neck before tucking her face against his side.

Looks like it's nap time.

*

"He's not Frigglish," Jane says about a week later. "You know that, I know that."

Roxy cracks her neck and grins when Jane grimaces at the sound. "But maybe he is."

"Rox." Jane puts down her coffee and takes Roxy's hand. "Frigglish is gone. You know what happened to him. You were there."

Roxy wants to shrivel up inside her skin. All at once, the terror and grief of that moment blow back through her. She'd just been fooling around in her mom's library; sure, she was tipsy, but when wasn't she, back then? And then there was thump of the book slipping from her hands and that choked, agonized mewl.

"I did it, you mean."

Jane squeezes her hand. "All I'm saying is, he might have a home. An owner who's freaking out. Put yourself in their place. You need to get his chip checked."

"But he's..." Roxy gathers Frigglish more closely in her lap. He smells like Frigglish, like sunbeams and dust, and he _feels_ like him, heavy and content. And Calliope loves him; Roxy has never seen her so happy and confident. She looks up and meets Jane's gaze. "I know. I will."

"You hang on to things," Jane tells her. "That's what makes you, you."

Roxy coughs and it sort of sounds like a sob. "What, like a hoarder?"

"That, too," Jane says.

*

It seems cruel to hope that Frigglish was a stray. Why would she want him to have lived that hard, scary life? But if it means she's his, and she can hold onto him, then maybe it was worth it. 

No, that's selfish. She's better than that.

Just her luck, of course, that not-Frigglish has a working microchip. The vet tech gives Roxy the owner's number.

It only takes her fourteen hours to face the fact that she has to call. Late afternoon, bright clouds scudding southward, as she paces the deck with the phone in her hand, trying to work up the courage. Frigglish and Calliope are inside, Frigglish draped over the arm of the couch, Calliope draped over him. 

When she finally does dial, it's only because she remembers what Jane said: how would she feel if Calliope got lost, and Roxy called her name like a hundred times, and someone had her and never let her go?

The phone picks up after two rings; Roxy's heart sinks. "LOLCATS, this is Nepeta!"

And then Roxy's heart almost bursts out her chest. "Nepeta?"

"Who is this?

"Oh my god, LOLCATS, I just got that!" Roxy can't stop pacing; a strange energy is shivering in her legs and she feels like she's on the edge of hysterical laughter, and there's relief and anxiety sparking all over her skin. "Land of Little Cubes and Tea, of course!"

"Purr-lease, ma'am, who is this and what is your business?"

Roxy stops short. "Sorry. Um. This is Roxy, we met a couple weeks back?"

"Roxy! I'm so glad you called. I thought you were mad at me!"

"What? No! Why would I be mad..." Roxy sinks down to a squat, then drops onto her ass and draws her knees up to her chest. "Your moirail made it pretty clear that I was bothering you."

Nepeta huffs out a sound remarkably close to a hiss. "He's such a goof, ignore him. Actually, it's purr-fect, he found out you're related to the ex-princess or whoever she is, so now he's all gung-ho and --"

Roxy can't keep up. Her pulse is thundering along as she rocks in place. "Wait, what?"

"He's such a snob oh my paws! But I'm really happy you called be-paws I like you, Roxy, I like you a furry lot and I haven't liked anyone for a long time, and..."

"Nepeta," Roxy says. She isn't exactly used to being the conversational partner who has to rein in the other and slow things down and get topics back on track. Usually, she's the babbler. This is kind of mindblowing. "Your cat's here."

"What?"

"There's a black cat here, his microchip says he belongs to you --"

"Cats don't belong to anybody, silly!"

Roxy laughs, and with the sound, a bit of relaxation starts to spread in her chest. "I know, sorry. I mean, the chip says he lives with you."

"Jaspers?"

"What? No, that was my mom's cat."

Sometimes, coincidences come thick and fast, clustering together like a herd of hungry cats. They twine around each other, butt at each other, yowl, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

Other times, one perfect coincidence, elegant and self-assured, strolls right into your life and takes up residence.

Either way, it's up to you what you want to do. Roxy likes to grab and hold on, take care of any and all creatures and friends and coincidences who cross her path. That's just what she does, and she's not going to let Nepeta go any time soon.

*

The rain of winter is long past, and summer is well on its way to ripening, when Roxy pads out of bed in the middle of the night. She leaves Nepeta curled up against the wall, Jaspers and Calliope bookending her head, Pounce guarding her flank.

TG: omfg i think im in LUV  
GG: Hoo hoo  
GG: You just realized this? :B  
TG: up yrs, janey j crocker  
TG: now we can have that double lesbian troll  
TG: wedding every little girl dreams of  
GG: Gracious!  
TG: :3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Alarm Clock](https://archiveofourown.org/works/710546) by [aphrodite_mine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine)




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